You Can’t Expect Me to Be Fine
We are standing in our kitchen, making dinner together — tacos, probably, because that’s what we’re always making — and the radio is playing softly in the background. As we set our pan to simmer and we step back to take a break, a new song comes on; it’s one I’ve never heard before, but it’s sung in a familiar Top 40 voice and it has a dancy beat. I can make out a few of the words — words like “love” and “fairy tale” — and that’s enough for me to take your hands and start to dance, right there next to the stove.
We are not good dancers — neither of us ever has been, but at least we know it — so we are laughing as we twirl and slide around on the around slippery tile floors. It is one of those moments of unfiltered, spontaneous happiness, the kind that surprises you with its purity and reminds you that life is good and hopeful and full of love. You spin me around and catch me by the waist, pinning me up against the counter and kissing me hard. We are still laughing, our lips pressed together, but as we fall further into the kiss, the room goes quiet except for the song, and I can make out more of the lyrics now.
You say it’s too late to make it / But is it too late to try?
I know, in this moment, that what is happening right now is one of those memories that I am going to retain for the rest of my life, for as long as my brain knows how to remember. It is the sort of vignette ripe for lightly filtered sepia tones and slightly blurry edges, the “remember when” filter that TV shows always seem to use for flashbacks. Even as it’s happening, I see it that way — like I am some future version of myself, looking back on some hazy pivotal scene from a past life. And I know I will always, always think of this moment this way — the moment we probably knew for certain that we were not going to be together forever.
Still stuck in a time when we called it love / But even the sun sets in paradise.
I know that you’ve made them out now, too, these lyrics about heartbreak and faking it, all set to a tune that gave us a false sense of security before reminding us that we were, in actuality, falling apart. We’re not willing to let the moment go yet, though, just like we’re not willing to let each other go yet, and so we keep dancing — slow-dancing now, the kind where we just sway in silence, holding one another.
But that spontaneous, genuine moment of happiness passed, has changed, has become something new. I am afraid to look at you for fear that my face will betray me, sure that I will start to cry and that we will start to officially unravel, right here over a pan of taco fillings. If we don’t speak, if we don’t part, if we don’t acknowledge that we both know what is happening all around us, then maybe we can keep pretending like it isn’t.
Turned your back on tomorrow ‘cause you forgot yesterday / I gave you my love to borrow, but you just threw it away.
There will be other songs —songs by Gotye and Jason Mraz and Ryan Adams and Stars and Billy Joel and even Taylor Swift — that remind me of you, of us, of the way we were and the way we weren’t and all the ways we eventually fell apart. There will be playlists full of songs — mixtapes full of songs, if it were the ‘90s (it isn’t) and I were that kind of girl (I am) — that tell the story of us.
But it is this song, this one cheesy Maroon 5 song, that will make me catch my breath every time I hear it for the rest of forever, maybe, even when I don’t miss you anymore and it doesn’t hurt like this anymore. This song, this stupid Top 40 song with its dancehall beat and its glossy pop sound, is the one that brings me to tears in public places like gas stations and the mall.
It’s nearly three years old now, but I hear it — of course I hear it —the day I learn that you’re seeing somebody new. I am walking alone on a Wednesday night through the streets of Midtown when it comes up on Spotify, piping through my headphones and into my already-fragile consciousness. I’m having one of those days when I would rather be anywhere than inside my own head, and now the universe has provided a soundtrack to remind me that I can’t escape.
Where have the times gone? Baby, it’s all wrong / Where are the plans we made for two?
I brought us here. I did this. Most of the time, I still believe it was the right decision, but I have to remind myself of it over and over and over, by way of both explanation and guilt: “Remember, you wanted this! / You idiot, you wanted this?” Even when the song isn’t playing, I imagine that you are dancing to better songs with a better woman, that you are happier and more in love, just like I promised you that someday you would be. And on my better days, I am able to remind myself that our love story will not be the end for me, either, that there will be other songs and other hearts for me, too.
But not today. Not right now, and not when this song is playing. When this song is playing, I am back in a smoky kitchen in New Hampshire, and there are tacos on the burner, and we are dancing like we know how to, and we still believe that maybe we’re not going to end up exactly the way that we do.
I know it’s hard to remember the people we used to be / It’s even harder to picture that you’re not here next to me.
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